Posts by Jazmine Jazmine Justice-Young:

Since the May 5th release of Childish Gambino’s music video, This is America, YouTube has recorded over 181 million views and it has reached No. 1 on The Billboard Hot 100. Critics have praised Childish Gambino, the stage name of Donald Glover, for producing a video with so many layers of political commentary which is proking a discussion of modern-day violence and culture in our country.

“I don’t want to give it any context,” Glover said an interview. “I feel like that’s not my place.”

But despite Glover’s reluctance to interpret the video himself, many critics have taken on the job on for him.

According to INSIDER, the gray pants Glover wears in the video are almost identical to those worn by Confederate soldiers during the Civil War.

The red handkerchief used to handle the guns at the 0:55 and 1:56 mark in the video, INSIDER believes represents the Republican Party, specifically how Republican-dominated states often value the 2nd Amendment over lives.

Chaos continues out of focus while Glover and school children perform a South African dance made famous by Rihanna called Gwana Gwana which Business INSIDER believes symbolizes how black culture is used to distract from black violence.

“Death” on a white horse gallops in the background as Glover and the children dance next to a burning car at 2:37.

17 seconds of silence starting at 2:42 is believed to be used to honor the 17 victims in the Florida Stoneman Douglas High School shooting

The video is packed frame-by-frame with symbols that make a powerful statement about black violence, gun control, white supremacy, and the media.

Black youth in the Oak Park neighborhood in Sacramento shared their responses when first watching the video.

“When I first saw it, I was like “Woah”. It made me think a lot about the black culture in American- like black violence and how people react to it and how a lot of the culture is used as a distraction from the violence,” said Makaylah Porras, a 17-year-old Sacramento High School student.

“There was just so much going on. I was distracted by everything. I had to watch it a good seven times,” said Violet Walker, another 17-year-old Sacramento High School student.

“The first thing I noticed was when he posed back and I saw him shoot the dude in the head. I thought it was interesting. I didn’t get the choir reference until someone explained it to me. I liked how it had an ominous feeling. It portrays how America is basically a facade. It’s not peaceful here, like, THIS is America,” said Layla Dobson, an 18-year-old Sacramento High School Student.

On May 24th, Assembly Budget Subcommittee 5 on Public Safety took crucial steps in addressing California’s increasing number of police shootings. Many supporters of the proposed changes feel that this legislation was a long time coming.

Between the 2016 shooting death of Joseph Mann and the 2018 killing of Stephon Clark, advocates for law enforcement practice reform have been disappointed by the little success for legislation to reign in the police.

Despite California’s liberal reputation and the public’s demand for more accountability for police shootings, law enforcement groups make it extremely difficult to pass bills concerning to police shootings, misconduct, and even body cameras, lawmakers say.

“The public has to become outraged with the people they elect that won’t fight for what is right,” Assemblywoman Shirley Weber (D-San Diego) said in March.

And the public has. The pressure is on Sacramento incumbent District Attorney Anne Schubert in her election against challenger Noah Phillips, who claims he can do what she won’t–prosecute police officers.

According to the City of Sacramento’s website, when an officer-involved shooting occurs, the police department’s Homicide and Internal Affairs Units respond to the scene and conduct an “internal investigation” into the shooting. These units are given oversight by the Sacramento County District Attorney’s Office and the City of Sacramento’s Office of Public Safety Accountability. After the investigation is completed, the case is sent to the District Attorney who determines if the officer’s actions were unlawful.

Since Anne Schubert took office in 2015, Black Lives Matter Sacramento counted 22 people killed in Sacramento County by law enforcement and 0 charges filed. The DA claimed each shooting case was justified.

AB 284, authored by Assemblymember Kevin McCarty (D-Sacramento), will allow officer-involved shootings to undergo an independent review, supposedly free from the influence of the District Attorney and the police department.

“Continued incidents of officer-involved shootings of civilians have caused a growing public skepticism of law enforcement and a conflict of interest for local district attorneys investigating officers,” said Assemblymember McCarty. “Today’s action will help build public trust and confidence in these investigations by allowing an independent review of these incidents by professionals within the California Department of Justice. Taxpayers and the families of those killed by law enforcement deserve nothing less.”

Laws requiring independent investigations of officer-involved shootings are currently in place in the states like Wisconsin and New York.

A study published by researchers Anthony Bui, Matthew Coates, and Ellicott Matthay of the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health found a new way to encourage police shooting accountability by calculating the average number of years lost in the lives of police shooting victims.

“Framing police violence as an important cause of deaths among young adults provides another valuable lens to motivate prevention efforts,” researchers wrote. “ [Years of Life Lost will] highlight that police violence disproportionately impacts young people, and the young people affected are disproportionately people of color.”

The researchers pulled data from the Guardian’s police shooting death database, The Counted, and found that in the 1,146 police killings in 2015 and the 1,092 in 2016, 51.5% were people of color. Different studies indicate that Black males between 15 and 34 years of age are 9 to 16 times more likely to be killed by police than any other race. Based on the ages and life expectancies of the victims, an average of 57,375 years of life was lost in 2015 and 54,754 in 2016.

In the wake of the death of Stephon Clark, the unarmed 22-year-old black man killed in his own backyard by Sacramento PD over a month ago, Sacramento Mayor Darrell Steinberg introduced an initiative to reintroduce community police procedure to rebuild the relationship between the community and police officers.

But some people feel as though the relationship between the community and law enforcement is too strained to repair.

Black Lives Matter Sacramento leader, Tanya Faison, feels that the community needs to focus more on self-empowerment and is organizing a cop-watching group with volunteers to help citizens with their inactions with police, believing that these practices will lessen the number of black and brown deaths by police officers.

Whatever way the city decides to handle police shootings, both the city council and advocacy groups seem to agree that police shootings in Sacramento police shooting deaths have gotten out of control.

Royal Society for Public Health in the UK released a report listing the top five social networking platforms that were damaging to youth’s mental health. Instagram was listed as number one, followed by Snapchat for impacting youth through anxiety and depression, as well as generating uncertainty about self-identity and body image. AccessSacramento talked to five teens who use Instagram regularly about their experiences with the app.

The death of Stephon Clark has been a national hot-button issue for the past month.

On March 18th 2018, two Sacramento police officers shot at Clark 20 times and killed him in his grandmother’s backyard.

Since then, protests have flooded Sacramento’s streets–stopping highway traffic and blocking access to the Golden One Center, home of the NBA’s Sacramento Kings.

On the night of the Kings vs Celtics game, both teams were seen openly showing solidarity with Clark’s family by wearing black t-shirts stating “Accountability, We Are One” on the front, referring to accountability for police officers and the district attorney, and “#Stephon Clarke” on the back.

The Rev. Al Sharpton flew in on March 29th to give the eulogy for Clark’s funeral at Bayside of South Sacramento Church in front of Clark’s family and loved ones–as well as camera crews and hundreds of thousands watching live.

“They have been killing black men all across the country,” Sharpton said, clutching Clark’s grieving brother, Stevante, to his chest. “It’s time to stop this madness.”

After nearly a month since his death, it seems as though everyone has an opinion on Stephon Clark’s death.

Some people assumed he was a thug and that he’d “deserved what he got”. Many sympathized with police, believing that the two armed officers, who’d never announced themselves as such, should be excused for their actions because of their fear. Others look to Clark as though he was a martyr, seeing his death as a way to push for reform social policies and police procedures.

But aside from that, Stephon Clark was a 22 year-old man with two young boys who will grow up without their father. The people who were closest to him are most affected by this tragedy and will never look at his picture and see him as a thug, or a martyr, or a statistic.

Patrick Durant, Vice Principal at Sacramento Charter High School, remembers Stephon from when he attended during his sophomore and junior years. Durant claimed he first heard of Clark because he was close to the daughter of a family friend and got to know him through conversations about college and sports. What Durant remembers most about Clark when he was alive was that he was a “very friendly kid with good manners and a great smile” and that he felt disturbed when he read text messages from community leaders sharing that Clark had been shot.

Clark’s former History teacher, Paul Schwinn, described Stephon as “bright” and “funny” when he was in his class.

“He got an A on every single test I gave him,” Schwinn said. “Every time he spoke in class he had the right answer and always explained history in a funny, accessible way. He was someone who made first period fun for me and his classmates.”

Overall, Durant knows that many of his students face challenging environments outside of school that staff simply can’t shield them from. “The more we can help to improve that environment, the less Stephon Clark stories we hopefully will have to endure,” Durant believes.

The verdicts of Rodney King’s trial and the Latasha Harlins murder trial turned Los Angeles on its head in the Spring of 1992. Five days of rioting that blocked streets, looted stores, and set fires to buildings killed 63 people, injured 2,383 and led to the arrest of 12,11. This is the subject matter of a powerful documentary now streaming on Netflix titled “LA 92”.

Citizens of LA were outraged when a video filmed by a witness was released to the media showing four LAPD officers brutally beating King with batons, kicking, and tasing him for several minutes while King lay on the ground.

After a three month trial, an all-white jury found the four defendants not guilty.

Tensions rose even higher between the Korean and Black communities after the death of 15-year-old Latasha Harlins two weeks after King’s confrontation with police. Video footage shows Soon Ja Du, owner of a convenience store in Harlins’s area, shoot Harlins in the back of the head after grabbing her backpack and trying to peer inside with the suspicion that the teen had stolen a bottle of orange juice.

Du was convicted of voluntary manslaughter in 1991 for the murder of Latasha Harlins.

Former Judge Joyce Karlin was condemned for sentencing Du to a $500 fine, 5 years of probation, and 400 hours of community service and no prison time justifying that she “knows what a criminal looks like” and “believes that Du will not offend again” in an interview.

For many LA residents, the two videotapes and the lax sentencings that followed were symbols of racial injustice reflected in the community and politics and many also considered Du’s verdict a catalyst to the riots that followed. Many people chose to express their anger by attacking the residents of LA’s Koreatown as 65% of the arsons and looting targeted Korean-run businesses.

Comparisons have been made between the Rodney King case and now, the Stephon Clark case. Both high profile cases received national attention involved young Black men that were either beat or killed by white officers convicted of using excessive force.

Protests prior to the defendants in King’s case mirrored Clark’s: highly emotional, sporadic, but relatively peaceful before the riots.

Sacramento Police Chief Han explained in an interview with Fox 40 how law enforcement plans to stay dynamic in case riots break out.

The independent autopsy of Clark’s injuries revealed that Clark was shot 6 times in his back, contradicting police’s alibi, and the recent incident in which a patrol car hit a protester and drove off has concerned many residents as heated tension grows larger in the streets of Sacramento.

In December of last year, Elan Seagraves, a soccer coach at John F. Kennedy High School, was arrested on human trafficking charges and for pimping at least two minors.

In early February, 58-year-old Yun Escamilla was booked into Sacramento County Jail on five counts of felony pandering–the act of persuading/forcing someone to become a prostitute. Escamilla housed five young women, constantly transporting them between three different Sacramento residences. It was reported that some of the women being prostituted were from Hong Kong and all were of Asian descent.

“Sex trafficking”, as it is called, is a global epidemic.

Thousands of people worldwide have been sold into, coerced or manipulated into sex-slavery. It has poisoned countless communities, but how big is Sacramento’s human trafficking problem?

“It’s been highlighted that there is more human trafficking in Sacramento than in other jurisdictions, but I think that it is equal to other jurisdictions,” Cindy Stinson, Lieutenant for the Sacramento Police Department and co-founder of Community Against Sexual Harm or CASH, told AccessLocal.Tv in an interview. “One reason that, if there is more human trafficking on Sacramento is because we have lots of freeways that run through Sacramento and there’s something called the circuit, where women will be driven to different cities where the freeways are close.”

Lt. Stinson thinks that another one of the reasons human trafficking in Sacramento is so highlighted is because the city is so informed on the issue and strives to do more about it through nonprofit organizations like CASH and WEAVE.

But is there any way individuals can fight against human trafficking in Sacramento?

“One way we can fight against sex trafficking in Sacramento is to focus on the demand,” Lt. Stinson explained. “So instead of going out and arresting the women or focusing on forcing action on the women who really are the victims, we can really focus on the men who are creating the demands to buy women–who are trolling around looking to buy girls and women for sex.”

“If all the law enforcement agencies in Sacramento got together and decided, ‘Hey, we’re not going to put as much of our effort on arresting the women, we’re going to put a lot of our effort on arresting the men who are pimps, who are trafficking the women, that would have a huge impact. It would also deliver the message that Sacramento is not a place that you want to come to buy women or traffic women.”

If you or someone you know is or might be a victim of human trafficking, please encourage them to call 1-888-373-7888, or text HELP to 233733.